Trust Between Comrades
by Rhiannon B
Summary: A witch's dying curse has power, whether you believe in it or not. When he's ordered to hunt another member of the STNJ, Amon finds this out the hard way. Preseries.
1. Kate

_I was angry with my friend:_  
_I told my wrath, my wrath did end._  
_I was angry with my foe:_  
_I told it not, my wrath did grow._

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Chapter One: Kate

Kate McConnell stepped out of the elevator, right at Miho's heels. The other woman was talking quietly about the hunt that they had just completed, but Kate didn't hear much of it. She was feeling distracted, and... pleasantly elated. She always felt this way after a successful hunt, although she had long ago begun to suspect that it had more to do with the thrill of using her Craft than it did with the adrenaline rush that came during a dangerous hunt, or the satisfaction of a job well done.

The last member of their little group exited the elevator behind her, allowing for a good deal of distance between himself and the chattering women. Distance was something that Amon seemed to prize, and it was something that Kate was more that willing to give him.

She couldn't say that she _disliked_ the other Hunter. Disliking him would imply a level of knowledge about Amon which she simply didn't possess. But there was certainly no great affection between them, and neither of them seemed particularly interested in remedying that. Ever since she had been transferred to the STN-J, they had avoided each other, interacting only as much as was required to accomplish the job at hand. Avoiding a person in a place the size of Raven's Flat was not an easy feat, but somehow they managed. She couldn't quite put her finger on _why_ this was... Perhaps it was simply the fact that their personalities clashed. No one could claim that calm, aloof Amon and brash, passionate Kate were anything alike.

If she was honest with herself, there was another reason why she had never attempted to close the gap between herself and Amon.

He frightened her.

Now more than ever.

She brushed that last thought aside, along with the thrill of fear that accompanied it. There was no rational reason to be frightened of Amon. No one knew. No one had noticed how she was slowly having more and more trouble keeping her powers under control.

No one would ever find out, not if she had anything to say about it.

Kate smiled at Miho, then moved across to her room to her desk, which was covered in an avalanche of files, empty and half-empty cups of tea, and balled up papers. Compared to the clinical neatness of the rest of the STN-J, it looked distinctly out of place, and she felt a moment's nostalgia for the cheerful clutter of the STN-A, where the desks were made of wood and the office was never quiet. Now that Karasuma had stopped talking, the only noise was the sound of Michael tapping away on his keyboard; Haruto was out with a head-injury from a hunt the previous week, and Doujima was off doing... whatever it was that Doujima did while she was supposed to be in the office, working. The administrative staff was also conspicuously absent, although there was a light glowing from above, so Zaizen at least was present. She wondered if he ever left. If he, like Michael, spent the precious few hours when the rest of them went home to sleep and eat cooped up inside Raven's Flat, albeit for a completely different reason than the hacker.

It was an unnerving thought, about an unnerving man. Then again, 'unnerving' was a word which could be applied to more than one member of the Japan branch.

So absorbed was she in her thoughts that she didn't hear it when someone came quietly up behind her.

"Kate."

A startled shriek escaped her lips.

Two of the teacups on her desk shattered.

Slowly, she turned to face Miho, who was still standing a few inches behind her, whatever she had intended to say frozen on her lips. The other woman's eyes were dark and uncomprehending, as if she couldn't quite grasp the implications of what had just happened.

She glanced at Kate's desk, where the tepid remains of that morning's tea were soaking into what was undoubtedly an important file.

"I'll get a paper towel," the psychic said, and although her voice was even, Kate couldn't help but notice that her cheeks were paler than usual.

Michael hadn't even paused in his rhythmic typing; whatever music he was playing on his headphones seemed to be turned up loudly enough that he hadn't heard the commotion. Almost against her will, Kate's gaze drifted past him, to where Amon had been lounging behind his own desk, preparing to fill out a report on the afternoon's hunt.

Pale blue eyes met with shadowy gray, and once again she felt that little curl of terror in the pit of her stomach. Only now, the fear seemed completely rational. For just a moment, she had caught a glimpse of what lay beyond the careful mask that Amon used to hide what he was thinking and feeling, had looked past those tinted eyes into the mind of the man. She did not see the same confusion that Miho had displayed, nor had she found the kind of dawning realization that she had expected. Instead, there was a sort of resigned knowing, like he had confirmed some long-held suspicion of his, and a growing resolve, as though some sort of decision had been reached in the brief seconds that had passed since the incident.

She had a feeling that she knew exactly what that decision was.

Amon would hunt her. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday. A time would come when SOLOMON would not hesitate to offer its approval, and Amon would hunt her, and he would kill her, and she would be unable to do anything stop him.

Fear crystallized, twisted, and turned into something else entirely.

For the first time in her young life, Kate McConnell _hated_.

On the other side of the room, a crack appeared in one of the windows, spreading outwards slowly and silently as though someone had slammed an invisible fist into the thick glass. This time, no one noticed.


	2. Methuselah

_And I water'd it in fears,_  
_Night and morning with my tears;_  
_And I sunnèd it with smiles,_  
_And with soft deceitful wiles._

_--------------------_

Chapter Two: Methuselah

Kate hated the Walled City with a passion.

She hated the dilapidated buildings, and the gloomy alleyways, and the closed-faced, silent inhabitants. She hated the fact that everything here seemed muted and colorless, as if the life had simply seeped out of it. She hated that it was always cold here, even in the middle of summer. She hated the smell; fear and desperation, and the more earthy scents of urine and mold and rot.

Kate was finding it a lot easier to hate, these days.

For the past two months, she had traveled the narrow streets of the Walled City at least once a week, huddling into the warmth of her favorite blue jacket and keeping her head down. The people here knew her by sight now, knew her purpose for being there among them, in spite of her status as a SOLOMON craft-user. They would glance at her face... then look away, and hurry by as though she had some rare and deadly contagion that they didn't want to risk catching.

It had long ago stopped bothering her.

She slowed to a stop as she approached her destination, raising her head above the sheltering collar of her coat only long enough to step from the pavement into the barren, dirt-floored room. The old woman was already waiting for her there. She always was.

It seemed like forever and a day since Kate had first sought this woman out, following the rumor of a powerful witch who ruled over the twisted labyrinth that was the Walled City. She had been surprised at what she found, and a little disbelieving at first, but the Methuselah had wasted no time in alleviating her doubts. Now she brought the woman what information she could on SOLOMON, their actions and their plans, even though she had long ago lost track of _why_.

She suspected that she hated the old woman a little, too.

That was okay. In spite of their arrangement, she got the feeling that Methuselah didn't like her much, either.

"Katherine," she greeted, in a voice cracked with age. She never called her 'Kate', even though Kate had never even volunteered her full name.

Wordlessly, Kate fished into her jacket and removed a thin sheaf of papers. She stepped forward and left them on the ground between herself and the Methuselah. They never came any closer than that. It reminded her of her working relationship with Amon; never touching, never speaking unless they had to. Oh, but how he would have hated to be compared to this woman, the closest thing that Tokyo's witches had to a queen.

The irony of the thought very nearly made Kate smile. She had precious little to smile about these days.

"I won't be returning here again," she said suddenly.

The Methuselah watched her out of strange, knowing eyes. "Having cold feet, are you?" In spite of the harsh words, Kate could tell that the ancient witch knew that this wasn't the case. She always knew. She knew everything, and Kate hated that too.

All the same, she felt compelled to answer. "No," she said, and her voice came out whispery-soft. She cleared her throat, and tried again. "No. I've been followed the last few times I came here. I... don't think that I have much time left."

She remembered the dark car that had trailed her here today, the shadowy figure that she had half-glanced lurking around outside her building that morning. "Not much time at all," she murmured, her hands clenching in the folds of her black slacks.

"I see," the Methuselah replied. She was silent for a long moment, and Kate began to think that was all that she _would _say. "If you wish, you may stay here, and we will keep you safe from the _confraria_. That is why you came here and betrayed them in the first place, is it not?"

Kate couldn't help but feel that this was a grudging offer at best. No matter how many secrets she had handed over in the past months, the old woman never seemed to forget or forgive the fact that she was still a member of the 'confraria', still one of the brotherhood of witch-hunters that made up the rank and file of the STN. "No," she said, once again, "It won't help. There's nowhere that I can hide. Nowhere where they can't reach me."

The old woman didn't argue.

"However..." Once again, Kate had to swallow and look down before she could continue. Her throat was dry, the words did not want to come out. It was no longer fear that made it hard to speak; it was anger. Anger seemed to be all she felt these days. Anger and hatred, choking her. "You know what else you can do for me."

The Methuselah was silent for a long moment before she nodded. "You came to me out of fear, in the hopes that your turning traitor would somehow save your life. That has changed, hasn't it?"

"It has," she whispered.

"You wish for vengeance," the old woman said flatly, "Against those who have consigned you to death. Against SOLOMON."

"Nothing that ambitious," Kate replied. Near her feet, the dirt swirled and resettled. She ignored it; she was used to such out-of-control bursts of power by now. The previous night, she had accidentally thrown her TV into a wall. That morning, the plate with her breakfast had hopped off of the kitchen counter of its own accord. "I'd settle for some poetic justice."

She didn't need to be more specific about her intentions. The Methuselah leaned forward in her chair, and used the stick in her hand to scratch a symbol into the dirt, the lines strong and steady even though the woman's hands shook with age. It took Kate a moment to recognize the rune _as_, which looked like nothing so much as a stylized uppercase _F_. It was the rune of communication, but it could also be used to share knowledge and information – both commodities which the Methuselah was rumored to have in abundance.

The information that she had requested flowed into her, like water. This time, when she hesitated to speak, it really was because of fear. In spite of her brave words, she did not want to die. "That's the only way?"

"Poetic justice, you said. I gave you only what you asked for. If you cannot protect yourself from those who you once called your comrades, then at least the one who spills your witch's blood will live to regret it."

Kate felt that now-familiar rage rise within her. It felt like an old friend, and once again the dust on the floor danced upwards, erasing the carefully drawn rune at the old woman's feet. She didn't even bother to argue at hearing the word 'witch' applied to herself. What else was she now, if not a witch?

"He'll regret it, all right," she said, looking down at her hands but not really seeing them. Her fingers curled into her palms, leaving little crescent-moon impressions in the creamy skin. "He won't be forgiven."


	3. Amon

_And it grew both day and night,_  
_Till it bore an apple bright;_  
_And my foe beheld it shine,_  
_And he knew that it was mine._

_--------------------_

Chapter Three: Amon

The door to Kate's apartment was open.

Amon stood in the long stretch of hallway that lead to the door, and considered carefully his next move. Experience had taught him that if something looked to good to be true, it usually was.

Not that anything about this situation could be considered _good_ by any stretch of the imagination. He couldn't claim that he would regret hunting Kate. She was a witch, and witches were hunted; this was one of the few undeniable truths in his life. But he did regret the _need_ to hunt her. They had never been close; he had never particularly liked her, and over the last few weeks the look in her eyes whenever their paths had crossed had bordered on loathing, as if she had known what was going to happen. Perhaps she had. He had watched as her Craft had slowly but progressively had become a danger, and she had failed to get it back under control. He had listened with only minimal surprise as Zaizen informed him that Kate had been betraying the STN-J's secrets to the witches, and that SOLOMON headquarters had ordered her hunted.

He had hardened himself to the necessity of her death... and if his sleep became a little less peaceful after tonight, well, no one but himself would know about it.

Gun in hand, he stepped through the door.

Kate was standing in the middle of her living room. The TV lay in a dilapidated ruin in the corner, beneath a sizable dent in the wall. The rug had been pushed unceremoniously to one side to reveal the hardwood floor beneath, and she had been drawing on the surface in chalk. It was a witch's circle, dizzying in its complexity, and she stood at the center of it. He hadn't even thought that Kate was capable of creating such a thing. Then he realized that the lines were smudged and scuffed, turning what might have been a powerful threat into an ineffective scribble – he knew enough about the methods used by witches to know that the symbols had to remain intact for it to work, especially in something as intricate as she seemed to be attempting. His eyes moved away from the drawing to focus on his quarry instead.

With her white-blond hair hanging rumpled around her face, and chalk dust on her fingers and her chin, Kate looked much younger than her twenty-two years. There was something wild and desperate in her eyes as she looked at her failed chalk diagram.

Then she looked up at him, and the desperation disappeared, replaced by mad, seething hatred. Her lips curled back into a snarl that was almost animalistic in its ferocity. It was jarring to see such a look on Kate's pretty face. He was used to such mindless anger from the witches that he hunted, but it felt strange and wrong to have it directed at him from someone he knew, someone he saw every day.

He shouldn't have been surprised. Hadn't his own mother become a stranger to him, turning into a monster – a _witch_ – before his very eyes? Kate was a witch now; it was not so remarkable that she should act like one.

"You've come to hunt me," she said, and her voice sounded oddly normal in spite of the bestial snarl that had contorted her lips.

"I have."

The odd half-smile that found its way onto her face was not entirely sane, and almost more disturbing than the snarl had been. "You'll wish you hadn't. I'll _make_ you wish you hadn't."

The fight was over more quickly than he had expected.

The force of the power that she threw at him ripped the front door off its hinges and flung it back into the hallway behind him. He remained unmoved, the Orbo in his cross glowing for a moment with the effort of deflecting her attack. Two shots were fired, unbelievably loud inside the confines of the apartment.

Kate fell back, gasping, onto her carefully drawn pattern. Blood bubbled up out of two holes in her chest, spread in an ever-widening circle beneath her. He glanced at the circle, and frowned. That was strange...

Too late he realized that she hadn't failed in her spell casting. The blood flowed over the chalk, tracing the circle in glistening scarlet and strengthening the blurry white lines. At the center of the diagram, beneath Kate's writhing form, a rune glowed, shaped like an arrow pointing upwards. It remained that way for a moment, before the whole pattern turned the same dull, angry red as old blood.

But nothing happened. No bang, no surprise, no threat. It was almost a disappointment. "You failed," he murmured.

"I didn't," she replied from the floor, and, even though it seemed like each word was an effort to force out, she sounded triumphant. "The rune is _tyr_, Amon. _Justice_. You reap what you sow. As SOLOMON has betrayed me, so will it betray you. As I have been hunted, so will you be. You've taken my life..." She took a stuttering breath, her chest rising and falling in spite of her wounds, then continued, "...so I will destroy yours. Within the next year, you'll watch as your world crumbles around you. I..."

She stopped, and did not speak again.

Amon stood there impassively for a moment, and wondered how her eyes could contain so much loathing, even in death.

"I don't believe in curses, Kate," he informed her, almost gently. Not curses like that, at least; he had no doubt that she wasn't the first witch to curse his name, and so far nothing had come of it. He reached forward, with the intention of closing her glaring eyes, but let his hand fall back to his side before he touched her. There had been no trust, no tenderness between them. He couldn't pretend otherwise now that she was dead. He didn't really want to.

The powers of a witch were a poison. They ate you up from the inside, until everything that had once been beautiful about a person was gone. His mother, Kate... They had both sipped from the same forbidden cup, sampled the same toxin, and they had both been consumed by it. SOLOMON was right. Witches had to be hunted; they had to be contained if they couldn't be killed. To save them from themselves, as much as to protect those around them.

Amon knew that now, more than ever. And as long as he remained secure in that knowledge, what Kate had foretold would not come to pass. SOLOMON would note forsake him; they would have no reason to do so. How could his world crumble to dust as long as he had that one truth, that one mission to hold on to?

"I don't believe in curses. I'm sorry."

What he was apologizing for, even he couldn't say.

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_And into my garden stole_  
_When the night had veil'd the pole;_  
_In the morning glad I see_  
_My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree._

- William Blake, 'A Poison Tree'.

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Disclaimer: _Witch Hunter Robin _does not belong to me, nor do the characters and situations depicted in this fic.

Notes: Many thanks to auntie-mom for beta reading this for me.


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